


Stains/Seals

by moemachina



Category: Final Fantasy Tactics
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Consent, F/F, Masturbation, The Wrong Kid Died, Tietra Lives!, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:34:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25829008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: Delita dies in the explosion at the fort. His sister survives. And thrives.
Relationships: Alma Beoulve/Tietra Heiral, Ovelia Atkascha/Agrias Oaks, Tietra Heiral/Ovelia Atkascha
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	Stains/Seals

**Author's Note:**

> This one goes out to Sappho, _The Favourite_ , and the immortal work _Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story_. (The wrong kid died.) 
> 
> I feel like this basic idea has surely been done before? And yet even so, I must answer its hypnotic, hopelessly dumb call. (Also, in looking over my AO3 oeuvre, I wanted to change things up and write some more F/F, and also maybe some actual porn for once, in accordance with the "take a penny, leave a penny" theory of Erotic AO3 Fanfiction.)

_"O my mountain hyacinth_  
_What shepherds trod upon you_  
_With clumsy, rustic foot?_  
_Now you are a broken seal:_  
_A scarlet stain upon the earth."_  
**\--Sappho & Anita George, "Fragment 105(c)"**

* * *

A shout, and then the sound of a woman being struck.

The rain continued to fall.

Agrias ran into the chapel in time to see someone dragging the limp body of the princess out the side door on the lower level.

"Damn," she hissed, dashing to the stairs and dodging around one of the mercenaries standing vacantly behind her.

Left alone in the chapel, the mercenary paused at the railings and stared down at the now-empty doorway.

He opened his mouth, a long-dead name on his tongue.

"Is it truly--"

* * *

_The air was filled with ash and smoke and snow. A few isolated fires still burned among the wreckage._

_Amidst the debris, there were bodies, bloodied and twisted and burnt._

_The snow continued to fall._

_One of the bodies stirred and then toppled over to one side. From beneath, an ash-streaked figure sat up._

_Snow settled on her long dark hair. One eye was swollen shut. The other eye stared unblinkingly ahead._

_The shaft of a crossbow bolt jutted from her chest._

_She turned her head slowly to look at the dead man who had lain on top of her. He was now sprawled beside her like a broken doll, and his face was turned against the ground. Still, she knew the back of his neck, the shape of his earlobe._

_She stared at the body for a while, and then she turned away and began the slow, precarious process of standing up._

_There were other bodies lying around her, but she did not look at them._

_She ignored the crossbow bolt in her chest. She ignored the pain that throbbed up her right leg with every step she took forward._

_She managed to walk for two hours before a passing patrol found her. By that point, the fort was just a distant smudge of smoke on the horizon._

_The men of the patrol were not kind to her. She expected nothing else. She had never known kindness from men._

* * *

Ovelia came back to herself slowly, surrounded by woodland noises and confusion. 

This confusion only increased as she sat up -- wincing slightly, gingerly touching her cheek -- and found herself looking at a dark-haired woman standing several feet away. 

The woman was brushing down a chocobo and humming an unknown tune. The woman was wearing a man's attire -- close-fitting trousers and a waistcoat and a linen shirt with its sleeves pushed up past her elbows. The woman also wore a very large black eyepatch.

The last time Ovelia had seen this woman, she had been pulling back her fist and then hitting Ovelia in the face and then--

An empty forest stretched out in every direction around her. 

Ovelia licked her dry lips and managed to croak, "I-is it a ransom you're after?" 

Her captor paused and glanced down at Ovelia. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, dry, almost dull. "A ransom? For you? No." She returned to brushing down the chocobo, who warbled quietly in contentment. 

Ovelia drew herself up proudly -- no easy task, considering that every muscle in her body was protesting. She was beginning to suspect that, in addition to being hit in the face, she had been tossed over the chocobo's saddle and brought here bouncing like a sack of meal. 

"Do you know who I am?" Ovelia asked.

The brush in the woman's hand did not slow. "I know who you are." 

She said nothing further.

Ovelia stared. 

If Ovelia had been kidnapped by a man, it would have, of course, ruined her forever. (The shame, the scandal, the stained honor -- the ballads were very clear.) But at least if Ovelia had been kidnapped by a man, she would have known what to do: be helpless, be inconsequential, be as small as possible. 

Ovelia had been dealing with men all her life. She knew how to survive a man. 

But a small one-eyed woman more interested in brushing down her chocobo than in interacting with her royal hostage? The ballads and the court bards had not covered this possibility. 

Ovelia took a deep breath and tried to remember how Agrias held herself when she was about to attack someone in the practice-yard. 

She made an experimental fist. Her hand looked pale and puny in front of her. 

The woman finished grooming the chocobo and put away her brush in a saddle bag. She put a gray hood over the chocobo's head, and the giant bird obediently bowed his head and appeared to go to sleep. 

"The question," the woman said at last, turning back to Ovelia as twilight began to grow around them, deep and velvety, "the real question, your highness, is: do you know who I am?" 

Ovelia watched her. A cool dread was developing in her stomach. 

"Come on," the other woman said in the same quiet voice. "It's not hard. You saw me every single day for a year." She walked over to where Ovelia was huddled on the forest floor and crouched down beside her. "Surely you remember me." 

Her face was as bland and as expressionless as before, but abruptly Ovelia was aware of the scars on the woman's neck, her firmly muscled forearms, the tough line of her shoulder. Her subdued demeanor had taken on a dangerous quality. 

If she was quiet, it was the quiet of a snake. 

Ovelia thought hard and fast. "Every...day? Were you at...the convent?" 

"Very good," the woman said, unsmiling. "Think further." 

Ovelia swallowed. "Um." 

And then, miraculously, an image floated to the forefront of Ovelia's memory: _the afternoon light streaming through the chapel windows, Alma's head bowed in prayer, and past her, a dark shadow, nameless and unknown--_

"You were...the servant," Ovelia said slowly. "The Beoulve servant." 

The woman's visible eye gazed off at some point beyond Ovelia's right ear. "Something like that." 

"Alma's handmaiden," Ovelia tried again. "It was...Taffy? Your name was Taffy?" 

"Every day, your highness," the woman said slowly. "You saw me...every day. And yet you can't even remember my name. I was nothing to you. You would have taken more notice of a dog in that convent, your highness." 

There was a knife hanging from the woman's belt, and the woman's hand was on its handle. 

_Alma standing in the orchard, holding an apple in one hand, saying, Try one, Ovelia, they're so sweet, and turning to her dull, mute companion, saying, You too, come on, T--_

"Tietra," Ovelia said frantically. "Your name is Tietra! Tietra!"

"Mmm," Tietra said, sounding faintly disappointed. 

"Tietra, yes, of course, Tietra, I remember you, of course I remember you," Ovelia said, aware she was babbling but unable to stop herself. "You were with Alma, of course, Tietra! Tietra, you've got to let me go, Tietra, there's no reason to keep me, Tietra, I won't tell anyone that it was you, but Tietra--" 

"Enough," Tietra said in a tone of cool amusement. "You have amply demonstrated that you know my name, your highness." 

"There's no reason to keep me," Ovelia repeated plaintively. "No reason to kidnap me." 

"Kidnapped you?" Tietra said in flat incomprehension. "Of course I have not kidnapped you. Your highness, I am your protector." 

Ovelia mouthed the word _protector_ with silent incredulity. 

"Yes," Tietra said. "There was a plot against your life, your highness. But be not afraid. I have come to rescue you." 

"Rescue me," Ovelia repeated, feeling her shoulders slump forward. "You have rescued me." 

"Naturally," the woman said. "Worry not. I will have you restored to your allies soon." 

"My allies," Ovelia said. 

"It will be, I'm afraid, a trifle uncomfortable for you in the meantime," the woman said, rising to her feet. "There are no down-filled pillows out here. No golden saucers. No hot coffee-pots. None of the amenities that you are accustomed to, your highness." 

Ovelia -- whose daily experience was typically one of hard convent beds, dented pewter cups, and well-water in the eternal ascetic commemoration of St. Ajora's suffering -- felt a real sense of defeat settle over her. 

"But I have some bread and cheese," the woman continued, strolling over to her saddle bags and bending down to root through them. "And by tomorrow night, we'll reach more hospitable lodgings." 

"Tietra," Ovelia said, finally asking the question that had been buzzing around the back of her head for the last minute. "Where is...where is Alma?" 

Tietra went still. "Yes," she said at last, her voice quietly conversational. "I have that question as well." 

* * *

_The men of the patrol remained asleep as she walked across the camp and untied one of their chocobos from his post._

_Under normal circumstances, the chocobo was trained to cry out and give warning in the face of a thief -- but he was silent and docile and amiable as Tietra saddled him and pulled herself up. Perhaps it was the long line of chocobo-handlers in Tietra's ancestral lineage._

_Perhaps it was the carrots that Tietra had been surreptitiously feeding him for the last five days._

_From atop the chocobo, Tietra surveyed the men lying huddled and still in their bedrolls. It occurred to her that she could easily cut their throats. They had not been kind to her._

_But they had not been particularly cruel, either. Tietra pressed her hand lightly against her chest, where -- underneath her coat -- there was a clean white bandage wound around her body. Certain exchanges had been made; certain transactions had been settled._

_Nothing had been given freely. But Tietra did not feel that anything particularly important had been taken from her, either._

_Even so, she had no interest in staying here and remaining their camp-follower, cooking their stews and clipping their toenails and listening to their interminable complaints. So even though she did not nick their throats, she did nick a sword and a loaf of bread and the little wooden box where they had been keeping the tribute payments of the local towns._

_She gently prodded the chocobo forward with her heels, and the bird happily moved forward in a trot._

_They had passed a good-sized town two days ago. A town with a bustling market-place, and merchants in need of hired guards. They would head there, Tietra thought. She had a sword now, and she could learn how to use it._

_She did not think of heading to Eagrose. Not yet. Not yet._

_Once they were out of her sight, Tietra did not think of the sleeping patrol-men again. A week later, she has a hard time remembering their faces, and they continue to slip further and further from her memory as time passes. They do not haunt her dreams. They do not motivate her._

_After all, they were not that important, and Tietra only has room in her heart for so much vengeance._

* * *

"Is this because of what they did to you?" 

Tietra cocked her head at Ovelia. "Who did what to me?" Even when asking a question, her voice remained dull and incurious. 

"The...the girls at the convent. How they treated you?" 

"Oh," Tietra said coolly. "You mean the tacks they left in my shoes? The spider they put on my pillow? The way they spit in my soup before they handed it to me?" 

Ovelia watched her carefully. "No. No, I meant...how they locked you in the crypt that night." 

"Oh," Tietra said, shrugging. "That wasn't so bad." A smile quirked the corner of her mouth. "It was quiet down there, at least. And after all, Alma found me before midnight, you know. I barely remember it."

Ovelia was silent. She remembered it. 

* * *

_Alma had her knee against Lady Cecily's back and was wrenching her shoulder back painfully -- Ovelia was saying, shhh, shhh, you'll wake the guards, come on, Alma, stop it, Alma, they're just joking, but you can't wake the guards, we'll get into such trouble -- Alma had her head bent close to Cecily's ear and was saying something that Ovelia could not hear -- Cecily gave a panicked shriek, just like a stuck pig, and said, the crypt, we pushed her into the crypt, get off me, stop it, stop it, the crypt -- and Alma was on her feet, running, disappearing down the hall, even though they were forbidden to leave their bedrooms at night, let alone the dormitory wing, even though everyone was sure to be so angry with her._

_Half an hour later, she was back, leading the other girl, whose name (Telly?) and relation to Alma (maid?) Ovelia could never quite remember. The other girl's head was bowed, and there was ashy smudges of dust all over her dark hair. She said nothing as she plodded behind Alma._

_Everyone else had disappeared back into their bed-chambers, but Ovelia alone had waited for Alma's return. "There's something wrong with Cecily's arm," she told her in an urgent whisper._

_Alma glanced at her. "Good," she said sharply, and then she and the other girl were standing in Alma's room, and Alma was closing the door behind them without a further word._

_Ovelia remained awake for the rest of that night._

* * *

"No," Tietra was saying. "None of this is because of those girls at the convent. I barely remember them." And then, in the same matter-of-fact voice, "Besides, I have suffered so many other injustices since then, your highness. It barely makes the list." 

She had rolled out two bedrolls, which she presented to Ovelia with a dryly ironic flourish. "One for you, your highness. And one for me." 

"It's cold," Ovelia said, her voice sounding more petulant than she had intended. In her head, she had sounded fierce, defiant, firm. In actuality, she sounded like a child. "You must build a fire." 

The other woman sank down into her bedroll. "I will build no fire. No smoke. It will alert our enemies." 

"It's cold," Ovelia said again, and -- to her horror -- she found that she was perilously close to whining. 

Tietra said nothing for a long moment, and then her hand snaked out to seize Ovelia's wrist. "Come on, then," she said, yanking her down, and Ovelia stumbled forward into Tietra's bedding with a protesting cry. "If you're cold, your highness, then you can sleep with me. _For warmth_ ," Tietra added with a rare note of acid in her voice. 

Ovelia very much wanted to protest this rough treatment of her person and this undignified solution, but somehow she couldn't even open her mouth, because Tietra was pushing and pulling and rolling her as if she was a limp doll, and then -- like magic -- Ovelia abruptly found herself lying on her side, with warm blankets on top of her and Tietra's even warmer body wrapped around her. 

"Um," Ovelia said. 

"Shut up," Tietra whispered quietly. "Shut up and go to sleep, your highness." 

"I won't," Ovelia said defiantly, or she intended to say it defiantly, but even as she was opening her mouth, she was closing her eyes, and a heaviness was coming upon all her limbs, and so it instead came out as an indistinguishable murmur. 

"God dammit," Ovelia thought she heard Tietra grumble, but perhaps that was merely the beginning of a dream. 

Ovelia slept. 

* * *

_A man with the facial hair of a walrus was talking, but Tietra paid him very little mind until the bishop nudged her with his toe and she belatedly realized that her name had been called._

_She went down on one knee and bowed her head._

_"This is the one?" said one of the men in the room. "The one you're nominating?"_

_"This is the one," the bishop said._

_"A large responsibility," another man said. "Especially for someone who is nobody."_

_"A loyal child of the church," the bishop said smoothly, "and one who has served us faithfully since she came to us so many months ago."_

_"But can she be trusted?"_

_"Is she strong enough?"_

_"Is it true what she did to Gus in the training ring?"_

_This continued for several more minutes, but Tietra found it increasingly hard to pay attention to the conversation. For one thing, it was entirely staged -- the bishop and his confederates had carefully practiced their back-and-forth disagreement that would eventually converge on her unanimous nomination._

_For another thing, nothing that was being discussed here would actually matter -- but these men did not know that yet._

_So boring, so tedious, so pointless._

_A means to an end, Tietra told herself firmly, willing herself to stay awake. A means to an end, a means to an end, a means to an end._

* * *

Ovelia woke up in the middle of a confusing dream: someone without a face was standing over her, and he or she held a sword by its blade, and they were rubbing the pommel between Ovelia's legs. 

She opened her eyes and realized two alarming things at the same moment: she had somehow gotten entangled in Tietra's legs, and she was somehow moving -- with sharp, shallow thrusts of her hips -- against Tietra. 

These discoveries were followed by a third alarm: Tietra was awake and facing her. 

The two women stared at each other. Ovelia vaguely knew she should stop moving, but she couldn't stop herself. She was still half-trapped in her dream, and that dreamed pommel -- thick and buried deep in the needy space between her legs -- could not be ignored. 

Tietra was expressionless. She did not resist or push Ovelia away. She was merely still -- still and warm, an unmoving force of heat between Ovelia's legs. 

_This is hell_ , Ovelia thought, despairing, trying to govern her treacherous limbs, but still too sleep-muddled to roll away, still too helpless to stop rubbing against Tietra's trousered thigh. 

Tietra's visible eye was narrow. ( _A face, a forehead, a plaited crown of blonde hair surfaced in the jumble of Ovelia's half-remembered dream._ ) Tietra's mouth was loose and red. ( _The pommel's hilt, moving between her legs, glistened wetly in the afternoon sunlight._ ) After a moment, Tietra leaned forward and kissed Ovelia.

A shudder ran through Ovelia's whole body, and now -- at last -- she went still, as limp and empty as a dead body. 

Tietra's hands went to the neck of Ovelia's dress and began to unbutton its myriad tiny buttons. 

Ovelia could have said, _No, stop, what are you doing_. But what was the point? Ovelia knew what she was doing. Instead, Ovelia turned her head to look at the leaves of the trees overhead. They were pink and pale in the early dawn light. 

Tietra's hands were now against Ovelia's bared shoulder. Tietra's hands were now against Ovelia's bared breast. 

Ovelia breathed. The leaves moved overhead. 

Tietra stroked the pebbled surface of Ovelia's nipple, which hardened under her attentions. 

Ovelia began to breathe harder.

Tietra shifted beside her. With her free hand, she was pushing and pulling Ovelia's dress further down. Ovelia should have stopped her. Ovelia should have resisted or shouted or screamed. But Ovelia merely pressed down her feet and lifted up her hips, giving Tietra the opportunity to push the fabric of the dress past Ovelia's belly, past Ovelia's thighs. 

Tietra lifted her hand from Ovelia's breast and shifted again. A second later, her soft dark hair fell against Ovelia's chest, and her hot wet mouth closed on Ovelia's nipple. 

Ovelia gasped and gasped again, a second later, when she felt Tietra's hand sliding down the front of her stomach and brushing against the edge of her smallclothes and the curly damp fur that lay between her legs. 

Ovelia should have pushed her off. Ovelia should have clamped her knees shut. But instead, she found herself spreading her legs wide, her knees turned outward, her hips stretched as open as they could go. 

Tietra lifted her face from Ovelia's breast and pressed it into the crook of Ovelia's neck and began to kiss and suck Ovelia's bare shoulder. Her fingers were sliding into the secret places between Ovelia's legs, the places Ovelia was forbidden to touch herself. 

"Did you do this in the convent?" Tietra whispered into Ovelia's ear as her inexorable fingers began to stroke Ovelia's folds. Her voice was as flat and as emotionless as if she was commenting on the weather. "At night, with the other highborn girls, when they took away the candles and locked the doors, did you do this?" 

"No," Ovelia whimpered helplessly. "Oh, god, no." 

Tieta pushed her hand further down, and now the pad of her thumb was rubbing against the little fleshy button between Ovelia's legs that caused Ovelia to groan aloud, and now Tietra's other fingers were probing and pushing even further into Ovelia. 

"Did you wish you did this in the convent?" Tietra asked, quiet and inexorable. 

"God, please, god," Ovelia moaned, lifting her hips and trying to press her cunt harder into Tietra's hand. 

"Tell me the name," Tietra said, taking Ovelia's earlobe into her mouth and gently pressing her teeth against it. "Tell me the name of the girl you most wanted to fuck in the convent, your highness." 

Ovelia should have said nothing. Ovelia should have said nothing.

But instead Ovelia arched her back, pressing herself even more deeply into Tietra's clever hand, and cried, "Oh god, Agrias, _oh god_." 

Tietra breathed into Ovelia's hair and repeated the name -- or perhaps she merely said another name that began with an A, Ovelia could not hear her clearly -- as Ovelia bucked helplessly against her. 

Wind passed through the trees overhead. A few leaves, unseen and unnoticed, fell around them. 

Afterwards, Ovelia should have felt ashamed. She _did_ feel ashamed. But that did not stop her and Tietra from joining together three more times that morning, and Ovelia came undone each and every time. 

* * *

_There is no one in the practice yard, which is surely the reason that the normally decorous and dignified Agrias dunks her sweat-drenched head under the water pump and pulls its handle until cold water pours down over her head._

_There continues to be no one in the practice yard, which is now the reason that Agrias pulls off her surcoat and begins unbuttoning the padded waistcoat that the knights wear during sword practice. Under the waistcoat is a light linen shift, dark with sweat. Agrias pulls her shoulders and arms through its wide neckhole and pushes it down, leaving her arms free and the shift pushed down to her hips. And now, naked to the waist, Agrias bends down again and pumps water over the long expanse of her pale back._

_Unseen by Agrias, Ovelia is seated in the shadow of a wall. She is holding a hoop of embroidery in one hand, though she has done precious little embroidering this afternoon. She was amused to see Agrias begin to strip -- it goes against all of Agrias' little proprieties, so Agrias must have really believed herself to be alone -- but even as Ovelia was opening her mouth to call out laughingly to her guardian, Agrias was pushing down her shift, and her red-tipped breasts appeared, and Ovelia's mouth closed against itself._

_Agrias stops pumping water over her naked torso and stands up again. Her pale breasts are heavy and round and shining with water. She laughs unselfconsciously and gives herself a shake, as if she is a dog coming out of a lake, and her breasts bounce, crimson nipples swinging from side to side. Then she pulls back up the linen shift, pulls on the padded waistcoat, dons the surcoat. She picks up the wooden practice sword and goes strolling into the hall. She is whistling faintly._

_Unseen and unmoving, Ovelia watches her go. At last, she reaches down to pick up the embroidery hoop that she has dropped on the ground._

_When she sees Agrias that night at supper, she makes no mention of witnessing her guardian's impromptu bathing._

_Agrias remains, as always, serene and distant, with every nicety observed and every button firmly buttoned. At the end of the evening, she mildly wishes Ovelia a good sleep, removes the only candle from the room, and locks the door behind her._

_That night, Ovelia cannot sleep._

_She rolls onto her stomach and pushes a pillow between her legs and begins to slowly and rhythmically press herself against it. She would never touch herself directly with her hand, of course. That is forbidden, that is unclean. But this? No one has prohibited this._

_She tries very hard to keep her mind focused on one of the guardsmen, or on one of the peddlers who visit the convent, or even -- god help her -- on one of the priests. But her mind keeps slipping off these old hairy men. Instead, the image that keeps coming back to her brain like an inescapable drumbeat is the memory of Agrias that afternoon, stripped to the waist and glistening like a mermaid._

_Her hips begin to jerk harder against her pillow, and Ovelia presses her face against her covers and rolls her body, up and down, and she does not utter a single sound, but the old wooden bed frame rattles so loudly and so frantically that Agrias -- in the neighboring bedroom, brushing out her hair for the night -- tilts her head in confusion and thinks,_ what strange noises this old monastery makes.

_After that, Ovelia can sleep._

* * *

They are riding together on the chocobo, Ovelia's arms locked around Tietra's shoulders.

Ovelia keeps asking Tietra questions. 

Sometimes Tietra pretends not to hear her questions. Sometimes she answers them. 

"I suppose," Tietra says at one point, her voice as flat and matter-of-fact as ever, "it's because I have certain debts, your highness. And I intend to repay them. Each and every one." 

After a while, Ovelia ceases her questions, and they both listen to the noise made by their pursuers. 

* * *

At the waterfall, a man with a mustache shouted rhetorical questions at her, but Tietra paid him little mind. She had other things to think about: Ovelia beginning to hyperventilate beside her, the enemy knights who were standing on both sides of the bridge, and -- down below, on the river bank -- the woman with the braid of golden hair bearing a large sword and a murderous expression. 

There were some other people with the blonde woman, but Tietra could tell that they were unimportant. The blonde woman was the important one. The blonde woman was the threat. 

"Agrias," Ovelia murmured beside her. 

More shouting from the mustached man -- _even princesses can be inconvenient to the greater good, kill or be killed, I'm a mercenary, dammit,_ et cetera and so forth -- with some occasional outraged interjections from the blonde woman.

"That's Agrias?" Tietra whispered to Ovelia. 

"That's Agrias," Ovelia whispered back, and the longing in her voice was unmistakable. 

Tietra sighed. _This all could have been so simple_ , she thought. 

"All right, all right," she said to nobody in particular. And then, before the mustached man could begin yet another tirade, she darted forward and thrust her sword against the startled man guarding one side of the bridge. 

The mustached man, cut-off in mid-monologue, shrieked in rage, but Agrias was already running up the hill toward him, and Tietra knew -- with a sense of deep satisfaction -- that she need worry no more about the man with the mustache. 

In the ensuing twenty minutes, the grass on both sides of the bridge was stained brown with blood. Some of the men died badly. Some of the men ran away. 

Tietra had expected nothing else. 

Afterward, Tietra and Agrias warily regarded one another. 

"You should leave the princess with me," Tietra said. "She is safer with me." 

"No," Agrias said, grim and unbending. 

Tietra glanced at Ovelia, and Ovelia looked back at her. 

For a long moment, nothing was said and much was communicated. 

"All right," Tietra said abruptly, moving away from Ovelia. "I will leave her in your hands for a little while." 

Agrias gave her a baleful look before turning back to Ovelia. "Your highness? I hope you are unharmed." 

"Y-yes," Ovelia said, stuttering, and then she ran forward and flung herself into Agrias' side and wrapped her arms around her. "Agrias, I'm so glad you're here." 

"Yes, yes," Agrias said, awkwardly patting her on the back and continuing to glower at Tietra over Ovelia's head. "I'm here, your highness." 

* * *

_Later that night, Agrias will sleep in an uncomfortable bed in a none-too-clean inn, which may explain the unsettling dream that Agrias will have, a dream that she is on the deck of a ship, a ship that moves back and forth in a steadily increasing rhythm, and there is something below decks that is moaning, that is crying, that is groaning out her name, Agrias, Agrias, Agrias -- and Agrias will come abruptly and indignantly awake, and Agrias will find Ovelia beside her (of course they are sharing a bed and a room; of course this none-too-clean inn has only one room remaining to let, and the poor ex-mercenaries have to sleep in the stable with the chocobos), and Agrias will say, still half-asleep, Ovelia, did you hear that? and Ovelia -- lying on her stomach next to Agrias, loose hair falling forward against her flushed face -- will say, Yes, Agrias, I hear it, yes -- and Agrias will immediately go back to sleep, and in the morning, she will have some harsh things to say to the innkeeper about the noise and rowdy disorder of his inn, even if Agrias can no longer clearly remember what awoke her in the middle of the night._

_Strangely, nocturnal disturbances will continue to be a problem at every subsequent inn at which they stop for the night. Agrias will apologize to Ovelia, again and again, and Ovelia will merely shrug and say, Nothing to be done about it, Agrias._

* * *

But before then, as they all stood in the spray of the waterfall, Ovelia turned back to face Tietra and said, "I thank you, Lady Tietra. For everything." 

Tietra inclined her head. "Your highness," she says, and if there is a note of ironic amusement in her voice, only Ovelia heard it. "We will see each other again." 

"Yes," Ovelia said, the word coming out as a small squeak, and then Agrias was turning away and leading Ovelia into the trees.

One of the unimportant mercenaries remained standing there. 

"Tietra?" he said uncertainly. 

Tietra squinted at him. "Who are you?" 

He flushed and said his name.

Tietra blinked. His hair was longer than it had been the last time she had seen him. And then, because he seemed to be expecting some sort of response from her, she said, "Hello." 

"I-I thought you were dead," he said. "You and Delita." 

"Well," Tietra said thoughtfully,"he _is_ dead." 

His flush disappeared, leaving him pale. "Oh. I thought...I hoped…" 

Tietra watched him without expression. "Have you seen your brothers recently?" she asked suddenly. 

"What? My brothers? N-no. I haven't been back...since the fort." 

"I see," Tietra said. "What about Alma?" 

His head jerked up in surprise. "Alma? What about Alma?" 

"Where is your sister these days?" Tietra cocked her head, her visible eyebrow lifting with the faintest hint of contempt. 

"Um," the man said. He had clearly not thought about his sister in some time. "Eagrose, I suppose? Unless the court has moved to Lesalia by now." 

Tietra nodded. "Very well." She turned and began to walk toward her waiting chocobo. 

"Tietra!" he cried from behind her. "Tietra, why are you doing this? And what do you want with my sister?" 

Without turning, she shouted something back at him, but her answer was swallowed by the noise of the rushing water. 

* * *

_Alma has taken a book from her father's library without permission, and she is showing Tietra its illustrations. The two girls are eating stolen apples as they pore over yellowed pages in the shadow of a haystack._

_Their wet fingers leave sticky smudges on the margins of each page._

_From a distance, as he walks through the field, the youngest son of the household sees them. He waves and shouts, but they ignore him._

_He cannot hear what they are saying to one another. It is lost in the high wind sweeping over the field._

_When he finally reaches them, they firmly close the book and refuse to show it to him, no matter how much he whines and argues._

_Then they are running, laughing, back to the big house, leaving him alone and forgotten in the field._

* * *

Alma sits quietly, barely listening to the priest's droning sermon as she regards the sequence of stained-glass St. Ajoras set into the chapel windows -- and then, out of nowhere, she feels a shudder run across her body, as if someone has walked across her future grave, as if someone far away is talking about her. 

All the St. Ajoras stare down at her with uniform ferocity, but she is looking away now, distracted and thoughtful. 

* * *

" _As a sweet apple reddens_  
_on a high branch_

  
_at the tip of the topmost bough:_  
_The apple-pickers missed it._

  
_No, they didn’t miss it:_  
_They couldn’t reach it._ "  
**\--Sappho & Jim Powell, "Fragment 105(a)"**


End file.
